Photoshop UXP plugin + XMPMetadata

Photoshop
2

There’s no API yet. You can set this kind of metadata via AM code, or now with BatchPlay, however it can get quite complicated.
During prerelease I’ve build a setup for me that works for settings/getting/resetting metadata to/from layers. It’s far from perfect though, I’m neglecting the full XMP structure or syntax like you’d see in the document metadata. It works for me, as the layers don’t have any metadata by default.
There are some flaws, for example I heard that it won’t keep the metadata when it was set in the past via the old CEP-code.

// --- Import lib (https://www.npmjs.com/package/xmldom)
import xmldom from "xmldom"
// --- In constructor...
this.dom = new xmldom.DOMImplementation()
this.xmlSerializer = new xmldom.XMLSerializer()
this.domParser = new xmldom.DOMParser()

// --- BatchPlay Getter/Setter
private setLayerXMPMetaData(xmp: string) {
  const desc = {
    _obj: "set",
    _target: [
      { _ref: "property", _property: "XMPMetadataAsUTF8" }
      , { _ref: "layer", _enum: "ordinal", _value: "targetEnum" }
    ],
    to: {
      _obj: "layer",
      XMPMetadataAsUTF8: xmp
    }
  };
  photoshop.action.batchPlay([desc], {});
}

private getLayerXMPMetaData(): string {
  return photoshop.action.batchPlay([
    {
      _obj: 'get',
      _target: {
        _ref: [
          { _property: 'XMPMetadataAsUTF8' },
          { _ref: 'layer', _enum: 'ordinal', _value: 'targetEnum' },
        ],
      },
    },
  ], { synchronousExecution: true })[0].XMPMetadataAsUTF8
}

// --- Access Functions
private setLayerMetadata(key: string, value: string, namespace?: string) {
  const xmpString = this.getLayerXMPMetaData()
  const xmlDoc: XMLDocument = xmpString ? this.domParser.parseFromString(xmpString, 'text/xml') : this.dom.createDocument(namespace, key, null)
  const node = namespace ? xmlDoc.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespace, key)[0] || xmlDoc.createElementNS(namespace, key) :
    xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(key)[0] || xmlDoc.createElement(key)
  node.textContent = value
  xmlDoc.appendChild(node)
  this.setLayerXMPMetaData(this.xmlSerializer.serializeToString(xmlDoc))
}

private getLayerMetadata(key: string, namespace?: string) {
  const xmpString = this.getLayerXMPMetaData()
  if (xmpString) {
    const xmlDoc: XMLDocument = this.domParser.parseFromString(xmpString, 'text/xml');
    const node = namespace ? xmlDoc.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespace, key)[0] : xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(key)[0]
    if(node) {
     return node.textContent
    } 
  }
}

private deleteLayerMetadata(key: string, namespace?: string) {
  const xmpString = this.getLayerXMPMetaData()
  if (xmpString) {
    const xmlDoc : XMLDocument = this.domParser.parseFromString(xmpString, 'text/xml');
    const node = namespace ? xmlDoc.getElementsByTagNameNS(namespace, key)[0] : xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName(key)[0] 
    if(node) {
      xmlDoc.removeChild(node)
      this.setLayerXMPMetaData(this.xmlSerializer.serializeToString(xmlDoc))
    }
  }
}

private resetLayerMetadata() {
  const xmlDoc = this.dom.createDocument("", "", null);
  this.setLayerXMPMetaData(this.xmlSerializer.serializeToString(xmlDoc))
}

// --- Usage Example
const someKey = 'layer-settings'

this.setLayerMetadata(someKey, 'some value or json-string')
this.getLayerMetadata(someKey) // -> some value or json-string
this.deleteLayerMetadata(someKey)
this.getLayerMetadata(someKey) // -> undefined
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